Jonathan Robie wrote:Here's a question I would like to know how to ask. Suppose I have a sentence like this:

Ἐν δὲ τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτοὺς αὐτὸς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς κώμην τινά

I want to ask "who does αὐτοὺς refer to?", but ask it in Greek. Any thoughts on how to do that? For instance, could I say this?

τὸ αὐτοὺς - τίς ἐστιν;

Are there better ways to say it?

Perhaps: τίνας ἀνθρώπους δεικνύει τὸ αὐτούς;

Another way might be like this:
Without abstraction it could be Τίνες πορεύονται; If there is no response to an open question, you could prompt with two or three alternatives. If you want to lead into the question, rather than asking it cold, you could ask (κατὰ τὸ κείμενον "according to the text") πότε ὁ Κύριος ὑμῶν εἰσῆλθεν εἰς κώμην; The desired response would be Ἐν δὲ τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτοὺς, then you could ask your original question τὸ αὐτοὺς - τίνες εἶσιν; Τίνες πορεύονται;

This could be reviewed quite quickly with the imperative followed by a description of what just happened in the aorist.

Tell one studen to ἄπελθε, then descibe it as ἀπῆλθεν, then tell two or three to get out of your space with ἀπέλθετε and describe it to the others with ἀπῆλθον.

I can see the motivation, but here's something I've found: once people are sitting down and looking carefully at the text, getting up and moving around is a pretty big distraction. That works fine in an introduction or in an ESL-style class, but not when looking carefully at the details of a text.

Ideally, anyone who can answer all the questions has a pretty good understanding of the passage. Ideally, the questions lead you to work through the grammar to where you gain that understanding as you go. Ideally, the questions should be fairly easy to answer. Let me know what you think.

I do think it's working well when taught in person. I'm not sure what it would take to make this more useful as a programmed text or for online instruction or a video.

I want to ask "who does αὐτοὺς refer to?", but ask it in Greek. Any thoughts on how to do that? For instance, could I say this?
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My students have no trouble with a question like τίνες εισιν αυτούς; When the question is asked immediately after reading the statement, it works fine. But Stephen's suggestion would be a way to clear it up. τίνες πορευονται;

Paul-Nitz wrote:My students have no trouble with a question like τίνες εισιν αυτούς; When the question is asked immediately after reading the statement, it works fine. But Stephen's suggestion would be a way to clear it up. τίνες πορευονται;

In general, sticking with the actual verb form in the text doesn't seem so important to people who are fluent in a language (and at home with jumping about in inflections) as it is to those who are learning it. Native speakers tend to form good grammatical statements or questions according to the context of what is presently being said, by changing the grammar (as least as practicable) to form a good utterance, while those struggling with a language tend to just quote at the expense of good grammar.

That internalisation - externalisation ("I own this enough that I can change it without affecting it.") distinction can also be because of the feeling that the text quoted itself is unchangeable (e.g. LXX or Shakespeare).